


An unlikely candidate

by Fiora



Series: Darcy's Dating Adventures [1]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: BAMF Pepper Potts, Darcy has everything under control, Gen, darcy and jane are friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-24
Updated: 2014-05-24
Packaged: 2018-01-26 09:43:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1683803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fiora/pseuds/Fiora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Thor had moved into the Avengers Tower with Jane and Darcy in tow, Pepper expected even more chaos in the labs, especially after the resignation of the previous head. But somehow her workload becomes less, not more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An unlikely candidate

** An unlikely candidate **

**Or: How Darcy became head kindergarten teacher at Stark Industries and was allowed to boss everyone around.**

After graduating Darcy stayed with Jane as her assistant, partly because SHIELD suggested it very strongly, partly because of the economy, partly because Jane was her friend and partly because it was interesting. Mostly. She had known next to nothing about astrophysics at the beginning of her internship with Jane, but she has learned a lot, even though some things were still way too advanced for her. And she got to meet a lot of amazing people. Like this week. Jane had said ‘Sayonara’ to SHIELD and taken the offer to work at Stark Industries.

After spending a few days on the same floor and in the same labs as Tony Stark and Bruce Banner (the “Special Developments” labs) she was done with all that shit. These scientists were like 5-year-olds when it came to taking care of themselves and the other science assistants and scientists were not much better. Most of them also seemed to be afraid of Bruce, Tony and Jane sometimes. Stupid beings, scientists in this category were a little like children when they were working. Not eating or sleeping regularly was a dumb move made by super intelligent beings, but Darcy intended to take care of that. Someone had to take care of Jane and her Science Friends.

~*~

When Tony had invited Jane Foster, brilliant astrophysicist, girlfriend to the God of Thunder and former SHIELD employee, to come to work at Stark Industries she had demanded that she could bring an assistant of her own.

When Dr. Foster had arrived with Darcy Lewis, said assistant, in tow, Pepper had been surprised. The only thing Tony had said to her in preparation had been: “Thor’s astrophysicist is coming, do we have enough space for her to live and work here?” As if she did not have enough trouble with running Stark Industries, being Tony’s girlfriend, handling the complaints by the assistants in Tony’s favourite little Special Research and Development Department and finding a new administrative head for said department after the last one had quit after a meagre two weeks, claiming that he valued his health too much to work with Messieurs Stark and Banner.

Therefore Pepper was not really prepared for two people (a fact which annoyed her immensely). Luckily Jane was to stay on the floor that was assigned to Thor, and the floors of Stark Tower were enormous. Dr. Foster and Miss Lewis had entered the rooms and decided to split the apartment.

Pepper was really relieved at the effortless solution, but really annoyed at Tony for putting her into such a position.

To her shame Pepper had not really expected much of Darcy Lewis. These expectations were not based on any knowledge about Miss Lewis herself or stemmed from a malicious part of Pepper’s brain, but came from knowing Tony Stark and his particular brand of scientists. She had expected another physicist to help Dr. Foster, nothing more, nothing less.

But what had happened shortly after Dr. Foster had arrived was something else entirely. Four weeks after the two new additions to Tony’s special department the complaints from Special R&D had dropped significantly. Where there had been almost 40 complaints before, there was just one this week. And it was a reasonable one, (Yes, the installation of better air vents in a lab that was used by Tony was a good idea). Additionally Tony was a lot more relaxed and seemed to eat almost like a normal human being (which made evenings together a lot nicer, when he did not shovel food into himself like he had starved himself for a week). Tony also slept kind of regularly.

In short Pepper was baffled, a thing which did not happened very often. What had happened with this department?

The same night Pepper had asked Tony about what happened down in the labs and his only answer – before kissing her until her toes curled – had been: “Darcy’s been keeping an eye on things for us.”

She had not asked much more after that.

The next step was to ask JARVIS, who would give her a lot more detailed description.

“Regarding the situation in Master’s laboratories, I can confirm a correlation between the recent, relatively incident-free time and the arrival of Dr. Foster and Miss Lewis. Especially Miss Lewis acts as an orderly force in the department, monitors the well-being of Sir, Dr. Banner and Dr. Foster, and she organizes a multitude of things.”

But when Pepper had asked about the how and why JARVIS was unable to give an answer.

“I am afraid I am unable to tell you, Miss Potts. I can affirm that Miss Lewis organizes the majority of the paperwork for the department and regularly forces Sir, Dr. Banner and Dr. Foster to eat, sleep and shower. But how she does it remains a mystery to me.”

By now Pepper was curious and the best person to give her a comprehensive answer with all explanations and footnotes would be Bruce. So she used the first free afternoon she had to invite him to come to her office for a cup of tea (They did that sometimes, sadly not very regularly, because they both were so busy. But at times it was nice to talk to a responsible adult, who was not working for her or solving engineering problems and other things with one part of his brain while simultaneously talking to her.)

~*~

“I have to ask, Bruce, what has happened in the labs? A few weeks ago you all gave me a real headache and I thought with the arrival of Dr. Foster that it would escalate further, but… everything runs so smoothly now. It is like a miracle.” Pepper carefully poured the tea into their cups.

“Did Tony not tell you?”

“All Tony told me was that Darcy was keeping an eye on things, whatever that exactly means for him. JARVIS was able to tell me that she organizes your non-science related things and forces you to behave like…” Pepper stopped.

“… like regular human beings?” Bruce asked with a smile. Pepper just nodded.

“I do not know if I can explain it very well. It’s just that Darcy not only organizes our work perfectly, she also manages to handle us all, which is astonishing considering our different personalities. She annoys Tony or Jane, she commands and demands, bribes us with home-made cake – which is amazing by the way – and somehow it works. At the beginning her focus was mainly Jane, but after the first week or so she also began to force Tony or me to eat and take a break. I cannot really explain everything, but Darcy is really good with people.” Bruce took a slice of cake. “She also scares the other assistants into obedience and the other scientists into something resembling order.” He took a bite of his cake and smiled. “It is pretty amazing.”

Pepper smiled back and sipped at her tea, but she was miles away in her thoughts.

“You know…” Pepper focused her attention back on Bruce. “… she is trying to get JARVIS on her side.”

“JARVIS?”

“To shut us out of our work stations and disable the computers when we do not get enough sleep or food. Well… mainly Tony and Jane. I know I can get a bit obsessed with my work but I know a bit better than to neglect myself with…” He paused for a second and his face clouded with self-depreciation. “…with the other guy being so sensitive to so many kinds of stress.”

Pepper grabbed his hand. “Don’t talk like that. You’ve done so well.”

“Anyway, so far it doesn’t work. Tony overrides all her commands.” Thankfully Bruce did not pull his hand away from hers.

“Hmm.” Pepper contemplated this new information and took another cookie. This was totally not what she had expected when Dr. Foster had moved in with her assistant. But maybe she had found a new head for Tony’s department who was able to handle him. Pepper made a mental note to research Darcy Lewis a little bit.

~*~

Last night she had asked Tony about Miss Lewis again and told him about her idea to make her head of his department, but he had been focused on something else entirely and had muttered his general agreement after telling her that he “thought it a fantastic idea and the kid was his favourite non science person after herself and Rhodey”. Afterwards Pepper had not thought much about the situation either.

Looking through Miss Lewis credentials the next morning, Pepper was surprised. The young woman had graduated _summa cum laude_ with a political science degree from Culver, with recommendations from several of her professors. Darcy Lewis could have applied anywhere and would have been considered a valuable addition.

But she had stayed with Jane Foster, first as an intern, then as her assistant. Pepper realized that looking through the written statements of Darcy Lewis’s life would only bring her so far. Even though the two women hat met on several occasion, they had barely talked to each other. It was time for Pepper to officially meet Darcy Lewis and with that in mind Pepper picked up her phone to invite Dr. Foster’s assistant over for an afternoon break.

~*~

Five minutes after she had ended the call with Miss Potts, CEO of Stark Industries, Tony Stark’s girlfriend and Forbes Magazine’s most influential CEO two times running, who had called her, Darcy Lewis, lab assistant extraordinaire, was still staring at the phone.

True she was working with Tony Stark herself, but most of the time he was just another genius with a very dirty sense of humour (which Darcy loved) who forgot to behave like a normal human being sometimes. Darcy also worked with Bruce, who occasionally turned into a big, green rage monster and she was friends with a Norse God, knew an American legend and two super-assassins. She was even living in the same building as them. But a call from Pepper Potts?

Darcy had written a report on her in one of her classes and had never, ever imagined meeting Pepper Potts in person. And now she was invited for coffee this afternoon? Man, her life had become so unreal.

Technically Pepper also lived in the tower, but she had been travelling a lot since Jane, Darcy and Thor had moved into the tower, so she had not spent much time with the rest of the Avengers and Friends clique.

Coffee. With Pepper Potts. Oh God! Darcy had a tiny panic attack.

“Jane!” No reaction, because the person in question was hunched over a machine.

“Jane!” Darcy threw one of her pens at her friend.

“What?” came the irritated response. “I still haven’t figured out how to stabilise…”

“Not important now, Jane. I’m freaking out, I’m totally freaking out!” Darcy clung to her armrests.

“Why?”

“Pepper Potts just called and invited me to come to her office this afternoon! I mean what does she want from me? I’m just your assistant…”

Jane huffed in protest.

“Well, it is true. I enter your data and program your stuff, bring you coffee and make sure you do not get lost in science land.” Darcy still grabbed her chair like a lifeline.

“You know that’s not true. You’re not just my assistant. Since New Mexico you have been my friend and my biggest support. I don’t know if I would be here now without you...”

“You’re sweet.”

“I’m right. Why are you nervous?”

“Because Pepper Potts called me and she is first of all our boss, secondly she is amazing and I want to be like her when I grow up.” Jane rolled her eyes at her last words.

“Come on, Darcy. It is just a meeting and you’re amazing with people. She probably just wants to get to know you and maybe a report about our work.” As usual Jane’s calm demeanour helped her calm down a bit. Her friend was probably right, with Jane there would be way too much technospeak involved, it totally made sense to ask her to do it.

As soon as she had realized that Darcy’s fit of nerves was gone, Jane was hanging over her machines and her whiteboard again.

But an hour later when Darcy was on her way out of the lab, to head to the meeting with Pepper, Jane called for her again.

“You know Darcy… when you’re meeting with Pepper… you could ask her about getting the rare earth elements we were talking about earlier this week. And maybe this new particle accelerator?”

She just rolled her eyes.

            ~*~

When Miss Lewis had arrived at her office, Pepper had realized that the young woman was trying to hide her nervousness. Observing that, Pepper regretted her busy schedule of the last few weeks a bit, she could have gotten to know Miss Lewis and Dr. Foster better already if she had been in New York more. She also should have told Miss Lewis on the phone that she should not worry about her job at Stark Industries. Too late for that, now she would just have to pick it up from here and convince Miss Lewis to take the job.

After getting seated getting coffee, tea and snacks and the customary polite small talk, Pepper decided to dive right in.

“How is it to work in the lab at the moment? I’d really appreciate a non-scientific, unbiased opinion about it.”

“It’s fantastic. Jane and I would never have dreamed about working at Stark Industries and of course the equipment here is so much better than what we had before. And the lab is great, it is amazing to work there and everyone is really nice.”

Dr. Foster’s assistant continued in the same vein for a minutes and Pepper’s left eyebrow twitched.

“You don’t have to tell me the nice, clean version, I was Tony’s assistant for years. I know how it is. You are an outsider in the labs, so to speak, the only one without a scientific background, therefore you’ll have another way of viewing the dynamics and problems.” She pointed out, when the young woman had stopped speaking.

Miss Lewis hesitated for a few seconds and looked intensely at Pepper, as if searching for something. After a few seconds she seemed to have found what she was looking for, squared her shoulders, took a sip of her coffee and continued.

“Well, it really is pretty great and most of the time everyone is nice. And if they are annoying me, I can handle them. The most work are Jane, Bruce and Tony. I know how Jane functions by now, so that is a piece of cake. Bruce is the responsible one out of these three, which still means he gets lost in his work and forgets almost everything around him, but I can bribe him with home-made cake. And Tony…” Here she paused to collect her thoughts.

“About Tony, I know working for him can be a pain sometimes and he always wants to be left alone, but…”, Pepper hesitated, “… but he must be protected…” She paused again not really knowing how to express herself in regard to him sometimes.

“Yes, totally! From himself most of the time.” Darcy interrupted her embarrassing pause. ”He and Jane are so alike. I mean seriously if I wouldn’t remind Jane from time to time to eat and sleep? She’d just collapse when her body could no longer take it and then probably get up again to work a minute later. Totally not healthy!”

By now Pepper had closed her mouth; she would not find the words to properly describe what she wanted for Tony.

“Shortly after Thor left for the first time, in New Mexico, I went home for the weekend and left Jane instructions for everything. But did she read my notes for her? Definitely not. When I came back, she was so tired that she did not realize when I switched her coffee with Sleepytime Tea. I mean seriously, who isn’t able to tell the difference between coffee and Sleepytime Tea?” The lab assistant shook her head. “And Tony is totally the same. Last week he tried to eat a poptart that had been stuck under one of his machines for God knows how long. So disgusting.”

Pepper had to smile at Miss Lewis’s energetic retellings. She had a really good feeling about her abilities to handle the department, because Darcy Lewis cared. So after a few minutes, Pepper headed straight to the main point.

“I suppose Miss Lewis that you were wondering why exactly I asked you to come here. Considering that I normally do not ask lab assistants to give me reports, especially not from this particular lab.”

“To be honest, yes. I had envisioned several worst case scenarios for this.”

“There is no need for fear.” Pepper smiled. “I realize that we do not know each other well at the moment, but I hope that’ll change in the future. Over the last few weeks I have observed that the complaints in the department Dr. Foster is sharing with Bruce and Tony have gone down considerably and after a short investigation it came out that you are the person responsible for that. Therefore I would like to offer you a promotion to Administrative Department Head of the Special Research and Development Section.”

“Me?” Miss Lewis’s eyes went wide.

“Yes, after everything I’ve seen of you, you’d be the perfect person for the job. You are able to handle Tony, Bruce and Dr. Foster in an individually appropriate way as well as the other people in the labs and you do all the paperwork anyway. You deserve a promotion based on the last point alone and knowing how it is to work for Tony, you deserve another. With this we’d just make it official.”

“Would I be able to tell Tony what to do?”

At this Pepper had to laugh. “Yes, and under certain parameters I’m also able to give you the rights to override Tony’s commands to JARVIS.”

“Awesome!” The young woman grinned. “Miss Potts, I’ll be your new head of department.”

“Wonderful! And you can call me Pepper, I’d say we’ll be seeing each other a lot more from now on.”

~*~

“I told you before: No!”

“But…”

“No.” Darcy did not even look up from her desk.

“But Darcy we’re right there at a breakthrough that could change EVERYTHING. Please switch the electronics on again!” Tony was almost ready to get on his knees to convince her.

“Yes, I know. You are always ‘near a breakthrough’. But you and the others haven’t slept in almost 3 days, just lived on coffee, poptarts and sandwiches and stared at your screens for an unhealthy amount of time interrupted only by working with your tools and stuff that could potentially blow up. That’s not healthy, so I’m putting a stop to it until you’re all rested and fed again.” Sometimes, just sometimes Darcy felt more like a kindergarten teacher than an assistant. “And with fed I mean nutritious stuff, not some crap.” She pushed herself away from her desk and stood up.

“Please, Darcy…” Tony took one more step towards her.

“And shower, you should shower before being allowed to continue.” Darcy said, after sniffing him once.

“How did you even get JARVIS to shut down everything?” Tony pouted.

“Since I’m, technically speaking, your boss here, Pepper gave me clearance to override your orders in certain circumstances, duh.”

With that Darcy left a dumbfounded Tony standing at her desk and began to shepherd Jane out of the lab.

~*~

When Tony complained to Pepper on that evening, she listened patiently to his recount of events even though she had already seen JARVIS’s video of the incident.

He would not have stopped complaining, had Pepper not reminded him that technically Darcy was really his boss in the lab. Also that Pepper had given her full authority to boss him around.

The incident of that day just cemented the fact that Darcy became Pepper’s second favourite person in the tower. Most days Tony occupied the top spot, but sometimes – not that she would ever tell Tony – Darcy’s levelheadedness put her on top.

**Author's Note:**

> My 2nd attempt to write in the MCU. I own nothing here.
> 
> Pre-Story to Darcy's Dating Adventures


End file.
